Here are my first impressions after spending about 3 hours with EQ2 ast night. I wasn't a beta tester and I haven't played an MMORPG since the launch of Horizons - so I was looking at the game with fresh eyes.

The install process didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would with 10 cds, only about 30 minutes. Account creation was fast and smooth. After about 10 minutes of patching I was creating my character.

I went with a male Barbarian. Appearance customization was about on par with Star Wars Galaxies. If I recall correctly it gives you around 20 sliders and options to play around with. I would have liked more options for customizing your body type and size. There is only one slider that controlled both the height and gurth. It would have been nice to be able to configure height, upper, and lower body size independantly.

You start off on a boat sailing to the newbie island. This boat rides serves as a quick tutorial to the interface and game mechanics. Its short and too the point and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Upon landing on the island you talk to an NPC and choose your class archetype - Fighter, Mage, Priest, or Scout. The NPC gives you some newbie equipment and your first quest - go kill a goblin. Most of the newbie quests involve a goblin uprising on the island. They are simple but well done and provide a decent alternative to standing in a field full of low level rats and such trying to level up and figure out what the hell is going on. I made it to level 5 in about 90 minutes of play through doing quests and bashing the occasional random critter.

Combat was fun, nothing revolutionary, the newness of it and the quality of the monsters and animation make it interesting to watch . Click a button to enter mele and tap a hot key every once in a while to fire off a special attack. One nice feature is you can queue up your special attacks before the timer on the attack resets. You don't have to worry about kill stealing either. Borrowing from FFXI, once you engage a monster no one else can attack it unless you call for help.

Overall last night was a perfectly smooth experience. A great first day for an MMORPG. No sign up problems, no patching problems, no crashing, no lag. I am sure a lot of this had to do with the fact that the game was released in such limited quantities yesterday. Hopefully It won't be a complete disaster when I try to login tonight.

Overall last night was a perfectly smooth experience. A great first day for an MMORPG. No sign up problems, no patching problems, no crashing, no lag. I am sure a lot of this had to do with the fact that the game was released in such limited quantities yesterday. Hopefully It won't be a complete disaster when I try to login tonight.

I'm not really looking forward to how it's going to be tonight... yet I am looking forward to it.

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It was this moment that took the movie from being a little ho-hum to holy shit, did that shark just eat a plane!?

I'll see if my local EB has any DVD copies... if so, I'll see you guys in Freeport tonite! (Hopefully...)

By the way, I haven't followed EQ2 at all--are the racial towns now dungeons or something? I know Norrath is in ruins after Luclin exploded, but what happened to places like Neriak, Kelethin, Felwithe, etc?

A graphic whore's dream game. I was able to play on high settings on my low-end machine (1.4 amd). I hope this doesn't change drastically as server starts filling up. Some of the scenery looks almost photo-realistic. I'm excited just thinking of exploring the world because it is so beautiful (I think you even get xp for discovering new areas).

The game is very easy to pick up and play if you've played EQ1 because most of the controls/commands are the same. I like that you can get a home right off the bat without any time investment like collecting money etc. It is really easy to add deco and interactive objects to your home.

Those are my impressions after about 5hrs of play. I was a huge EQ1 fan and so far I am really excited. Of course it will take some time to figure out long term potential and it's hard to give an objective view during the typical euphoria felt at mmrpg launches.

Overall last night was a perfectly smooth experience. A great first day for an MMORPG. No sign up problems, no patching problems, no crashing, no lag. I am sure a lot of this had to do with the fact that the game was released in such limited quantities yesterday. Hopefully It won't be a complete disaster when I try to login tonight.

Out of curiosity, if you head back down the dock from where you 'spawn' on the island, you'll find a bell. If you Right Click on it, you can bring up an option to travel to another Island zone.

What's the highest number you can choose from? And, in addition, when you first zone into the Island, you'll see 'Island of (forgot name) X', where X is the instance that you're currently on. I think it's also on the map as well.

I'm trying to get an unofficial figure as to how many players are playing on prime time, incase you're asking, as I decided not to pick up this game based on my latter experiences in beta.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

The subclasses of Enchanters (which are subclasses of Mages) are either the Illusionist or the Coercer. Illusionists are described as a class who "confound and befuddle enemies." Coercers "dominate the minds of the weak and hurl their foes into paralyzing states of confusion and catatonia."

last night on antonio bayle there were 9 instances running of the evil isle. Each instance is supposed to be roughly 60 players.

Playing today has been a good bit more crowded, but not lagging at all, no stability issues. Without having access to hard numbers, but looking at various zones, talking to people on isles to find out number of instances and so on, and knowing level ranges I would say there was roughly 800 or 900 people on the RP server this morning.

I might try this out, which would be a pathetic caving in on my part since I swore a blood oath to never pay for another SOE game.

Anyway. I saw in another thread where you guys where checking pings and hopcounts, where can I get a listing of the server IPs?

Also, is there a good beginner's info site for the game? I have much MMO experience, especially EQ1, but I havent been following this game at all and so I do not know much about the classes and races. I looked around the major sites and didnt see anything too advanced. Just basic descriptions, for the most part.

Are their racial traits/bonuses, aside from the starting stats I mean. Like do DEs still get ultravision, is it even an advantage these days? What about classes, what is the best solo class? Are there certain classes that have a harder time finding a group? An easier time? Etc. What classes get travel/runspeed buffs?

Finally, is that 4 character per account stuff still the case? That really sucks if you want to try out different classes/races/factions.

Ok thanks, the first one of those is awesome. The second one is just links to other sites right? Third one looked to be in flash or something, wasnt loading for me.

I still cant seem to find much info on the races. What exactly are the bonuses for all of them, outside of stats/resists? I saw mention of racial traditions...but could not find a comprehensive list. Is that not in the game yet?

They have not released a full list of racial traditions. None of them are game breaking, however some races can get bonuses to crafting which is nice if you are a crafter. Honestly, pick the race that you will enjoy looking at for a long time.

For pinging and tracert...

example server..

ping mistmoore.everquest2.comtracert mistmoore.everquest2.com

just use the full server name to check. They have 8 new servers since launch. The roleplaying server has been getting some of the heaviest loads, yet has been very lag free for me, despite being on the east coast, and the server on west coast.

I'm very tempted to get into this...but damn I don't think I have the time to make it worthwhile (or the money really). I wish it was $10 a month or that the 90 day card was cheaper than buying 3 30 day cards.

I subscribed for 6 months and it worked out to be something like 12 a month. Quite honestly when a game like this hooks you, you spend much less money on fringe games that you don't buy that you normally would have if you weren't addicted to EQ2.

Last night, from about 7:30p until 11:00p I had a chance to visit a co-workerâs house who picked up EQII yesterday. My initial impressions follow.

MMO Background: I watched a friend play EQ1 for about 15 minutes one day. I have played City of Heroes for about 1 month before getting bored. I played the WoW stress test for about a week and enjoyed it. Thatâs it. My MMORPG experience is extremely limited, and I have no subverted allegiance whatsoever to any company or game.

My Sporadic Thoughts:

My friend Mike had me start from scratch. Watch the video, make a character, do the boat rideâŚ the whole thing. I made a Wood Elf and set sail. The very first thing I thought of when cruising around the ship was that the game reminded me of what Morrowind would look like if it was an MMO. The models were really nice (if a bit stiff looking), and all the speech was excellent and surprisingly appropriate for each NPC on-board. The gnome sounded like a gnome, the elf like an elf, etcâŚ (whatever gnomes and elves âsoundâ like that is). The sound effects of the ocean were also great.

The interface is nice, giving you lots of options to tweak it to your desires. Mike likes playing in wide-screen for example, while I like the full screen effect (cause Iâm used to it most likely). You can change where boxes are, opacity, sound levels of ambient effects, weapon noises, NPC speech, music loudness, etcâŚ There are too many options to list as far as HUD and interface options go.

The game, overall, was a bit overwhelming at first. Mike didnât help me one bit. He just sat back and watched (and drank his Sammy). I got on the beach of the Isle and floundered around for awhile trying to figure out the interface and the options. Comparing this game to WoW for me is like comparing an orange with a banana. They are both fruits, but they taste very different.

The graphics are sort of bizarre. We were playing on Very High settings I think??? He has an AMD Athlon64 3000+ with a 9800pro and 1 gig of ram, which I am assuming is not too shabby for this game. The game just reminds me of Morrowind for some reason. Great graphics and kind of stiff NPCâs. I made my Elf a Priest so I could see some spell effects. The little holy bolt attack is pretty standard, but the first heal spell was just so incredibly cool. I was healing everyone on the beach just to see it. The grass sways when a character runs through it, then it eventually stops. Way cool. There is kind of a ârusticâ look on the island. Almost looks photo-realistic in a way. Iâll tell you this much: I can see why certain people prefer WoWâs graphics to these, and visa-versa. They are just monumentally different. I like both styles myself. I have no clue which I like better yet. But one thing is for sure. When I went into infravision mode for my elfâŚ holy crap!!! The screen went almost completely black and all living creatures showed up as heat sources! It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

Random stuff: It is weird being a Priest and not being able to heal people in combat. They get this little picture of a lock beside them, which must mean you cannot interfere with their battle (even just to heal them) unless they ask for help. Once the battle is over and the lock disappears, you can heal them. I think I like WoWâs system better, at least initially. You can help anyone at any time. You can help them fight or heal them, even if they are not in your group, which just seems much more realistic. As far as emotes goâŚ holy-moly are there a ton of these. And most of them look fantastic. I was looking at the way the class system works (the branching tree-like style). I donât know if I like this or not. I certainly like the concept, but it just seems kind of weird. I am curious as to the level of differentiation between two Druids at say, level 15. Will there be any choices to make as you level up to differentiate you from Joe Blow Druid? Are there skill choices, or anything like that in EQII? I simply donât know. I hope so.

Oh yeahâŚ another cool thing is the combat animation with my bo-stick (staff). Totally great blurring motion effects. Way way better than the animations I have seen with WoW so far. Very engaging. I got to craft a little iron spike or something. I like the crafting system. It is certainly more engaging than anything I have done so far in WoW. I also like the âright-click on anythingâ system of EQII. Gives you information on people, weapons, spells, etcâŚ Great job on that.

Overall, after my initial play time, I felt like EQII was suited much more for the âhardcore roleplayerâ than WoW. This is not meant as a good or bad thing. Just an observation. Everything seems a bit slower and methodical in EQII. My initial impressions are basically that I have no idea if I will like the game or not. I have yet to discover anything really. There is no doubt you can get submersed in this game if you want. My biggest initial fears are 1. Not being able to help people on the fly unless you are grouped. 2. That the spell lists I was looking at seemed kind of bland. The effects are phenomenal, but the list seems kind of blah. I am going over to his place again tonight to watch him play. Maybe I will have more of an idea of that. Right now, I have more questions than answers. One thing is for sureâŚ it doesnât suck.

LD

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LD

"Let your enemies fear, for a harlequin of the Laughing God dances at your side."

Just a quick response... there are pros and cons to the locked combat, and to SOE the pros outweighed the cons. The big thing is it stops kill stealing. While i hate not being able to help someone in battle, I hate kill stealing even worse.

Spell lists are fairly bland until lvl 20 when you get to choose your final class.

You know, I haven't seen a single complaint about the 1st day registration/lag/stability issues yet. Does this mean we have had a smooth launch? Wouldn't that be a first for SOE? If so, BRAVO. It took them a while, but they finally got it right!

I fully expect Blizzard to NOT have a smooth launch now, based on my open betal experience. I really think the game needs more time. (WoW)

You know, I haven't seen a single complaint about the 1st day registration/lag/stability issues yet. Does this mean we have had a smooth launch? Wouldn't that be a first for SOE? If so, BRAVO. It took them a while, but they finally got it right!

I fully expect Blizzard to NOT have a smooth launch now, based on my open betal experience. I really think the game needs more time. (WoW)

There were some zones that died last night, for upwards of an hour or so. Frustrating, but that was the only bug so far in a game in which I have seen no lag or had no CTDs (though I have heard others have).

Theres no kill stealing in WoW either (first to hit something gets it no matter what) and yet you can still help people by healing them ior fighting the mob and they still get all the exp they would have if you had'nt helped....much better than EQ2's way.

Theres no kill stealing in WoW either (first to hit something gets it no matter what) and yet you can still help people by healing them ior fighting the mob and they still get all the exp they would have if you had'nt helped....much better than EQ2's way.

I'm not sure I agree. What if you don't want help?

I just started playing WoW OB and naturally there are a million characters in the noob areas. Maybe I'm in with a lot of first time MMO players, but everyone seems to be whacking what I pull. They may not be stealing XP, but aren't they doing it for the skill increases? Increases that I would get if I didn't take down the mob myself? Also, is there a way to tell if you hit the mob first?

The other issue with locked combat being the way it is in EQ2... they can predict the amount of power someone has when going into an encounter. So lets say you go into a dungeon, encounters are tailored to be doable by groups of 6. Throw in some extra healers outside of the group and now the encounters become trivial. It was stated part of it was for this very reason, they know how powerful a group can be, there is no variable of high lvl buffing/healing to unbalance.

Went out and picked up EQ2 yesterday during lunch, as I stated in earlier posts I was going to take a pass on this but I have become fairly disillusioned with the direction WoW is taking. First off let me say I had a pretty big scare when I got to the local EB games, I walked up to the store and there was a line stretching out the door and way out into the Mall. I thought "holy cow, everyoneâs here for EQ2! I will never get a copy!" Luckily they were all and I mean ALL on line for Halo 2 .

I purchased the CD edition and have to say was pleasantly surprised by the packaging. I like the "Fan Fold" CD holder they came up with. The install, initially, went a lot quick then I had anticipated. Unfortunately when I hit DISC 9, the install came to a halt with "Incorrect Format" errors. Tryed a few things but could not get the system to recognize the final disc. Figured I would have to run back to EB games for a return, tryed it one more time and it finally worked. This is good and bad, good because I got into the game yesterday without having to drive all the way back to the store but bad because If I need to do a re-install Im not sure if it will work again.

Registration was a snap and went very smoothly, have to say this was the easiest time I have had registering for an MMORPG on opening day. However I attribute ALOT of that to the fact 90% of the gaming world was playing Halo 2 yesterday.

Installed all the patches and commenced to roll up my first character. I am not too impressed with the customization choices. They werenât bad I was just expecting more from all the hype. To be fair WoW's character customization is no better either. Spent about 5 or 6 minutes designing my Dwarf when I started getting severe video glitches, screen was jittering and I was getting strange graphic errors so I sort of rushed through the last bit.

My first impression upon entering the game was "WTF is this Letter Box effect??? Since I chose to do the tutorial I figured it was just part of that.So I proceeded to go through the tutorial and found it to be pretty standard fair. Will say the rolling ocean on the ship looked really nice. The voice-overs were cool but Iâm the type that tends to turn that off after about an hour. The double-left click took some getting used to(still having trouble after about 8 hours of play). You donât just do a normal double-click you have to do it with a pause or it doesnât register, or at least it was the case for me.

I finished the tutorial and landed on "Refuge Island" unfortunately the Letter Box did not go away, I spent some time in the options trying to turn it off but the best I could do was expand it really wide but its still there and annoys me(I know sort of a minor issue).So my friend and I both get to the island and start running around looking for each other but cannot locate one another. "Iâm standing right next to the NPC on the dock", "So am I" ,"You cant be cause Iâm here and your not!" So anyway I figure out we are in different instances(little warning would have been nice) so I go running around trying to figure out how we can get to the same place and after about 10 minutes I start playing with the Bells on the dock and lo and behold! "Zone to Friends" option pops up. (again a little info on this would have been nice). So now we are in the same place and we begin our adventuring. At this point the game is running pretty smooth as far as lag or chop. Personally I donât like the graphics from a purely aesthetic point of view. Its hard to pin down because they arenât really bad it just doesnât appeal to me. So anyway we start running around talking to NPC's and gathering up quests etc. This was pretty easy to do and the quest log is pretty cool and if players are grouped everyone gets the quest when one player accepts it. I would have liked to have seen a "share quest" option ala WoW. My friend had to log for about 5 minutes and I took 2 more questswhile he was gone, when he returned he had to run back and get them again since we were not grouped at the time and could not share them. Another minor point but from the shear number of quests you can get in this game it may become more of a factor later on. Combat was pretty easy and we proceeded at a pretty good pace. An issue I am having at the moment though is as a priest there were countless times I would have liked to be able to throw a heal on another player and help them out in combat but could not because of the "locked combat" system. I knew about this going into the game though so no big surprise, what I did find surprising Is I could not heal other players who were NOT in combat either. If I passed a player sitting down trying to recover some health I could not heal them unless we invited them into our group... this is just stupid IMHO. Ok so my friend and I are running around doing our quests, killing mobs and leveling up. He needs to log again for dinner so I decide to play around with the crafting. Now I know a lot of folks like this new crafting system but for me all I can say is "Ugghhh!" Waaaay to complex. The harvesting part is ok you run around and find materials in the world to harvest like wood or plants or you get materials off of mobs you kill. However to make a simple piece of lumber I needed some wood from a tree(no problem) fuel for the forge(you can buy this so still not that big a problem) and chloro resin. Ok so I didnât see any chloro resin at the vendor and I havenât found any yet so I click on it and find out its another crafted item. So now I have to run back to the vendor and buy different fuel, then run back outside and hunt around for more materials so I can make the Chloro resin I need to make the simple piece of lumber. I purchased one of the starter artisan recipe books and it gets worse, much, much worse. Also during your crafting session you will get these "occurences" like while making wood a message will flash saying "you mis-measured" or while cooking it will say " too much heat!" now inside your Tradeskills window you have a bunch of actions you can use while crafting which you click on to compensate for the "occurences"(still with me?) Now some of the counter-measures are intuitive but many are not so you basically have to do a ton of crafting to figure out which "occurence" will happen while crafting what type of item, Wood, cloth , alchemy etc. and then setup a hotbar with the appropriate counter-measures. As I said earlier WAY to complex for me. Just to give you a counterpoint, my friend abhors crafting, we have played every MMORPG out there and I am always the designated crafter. In his mind every minute spent crafting is a minute he is not out doing something fun and exciting. He has become a crafting maniac in WoW.

Ok so my friend is back and we head out adventuring again, let me say at this point I like the overhead map system in EQ2. You get a map of your area with a big red dot that shows where you are and you can keep it open while moving around and the red dot will move as you do so it makes it very easy to navigate. Let me also say I wish they had put in the feature that allows you to see your group-mates on the map again ala WoW(incredibly useful feature) but again just a minor issue. I also very much liked the "glowing thread" thingie that pops up to direct you to your destination at times. Itâs sort of like a glowing gold umbilical cord you just follow to get where you need. It comes up whenever you die and shows you were your "Shard" is which is cool and sometimes for various quests. Not sure why it doesnât show for all quests but itâs still a cool feature. I will also second the coolness of the combat animations in EQ2. I was also using the Bo staff at one point and loved the flourishes. The scout and fighter special moves are also very nice. You can also get about 2 paragraphs worth of information on each mob when you âconâ it in game as well as see exactly, which neighboring mobs will aggro along with your target. I am still on the fence with this one, on the one hand it makes combat almost a no brainer and on the other hand it makes combat almost a no brainer.At this point we are both around level 6 and unfortunately this was where things really began going down hill for me. We took a quest to kill some big bad guy, we show up at his lair and proceed to kill his henchmen, we then pull the B.B.G. and he kills the two of us in about 6 or 8 swings. WOW! So ok we figure we need to gain a few more levels even though this is supposed to be the ânewbieâ zone but no worries. So we head out and do a few more quests, and during one of them an item drops that initiates a side quest âHey coolâ. So we stop our current quest and start up on the side quest which leads up to a point where we spawn another B.B.G. this time we are both dead in about 4 swings. Well we already determined we needed some more levels so back we go to questing. Now the quest we were currently working on required us to kill some skeletons to get some bone chips etc. etc. We get back to the one spot where the skeletons spawn and there are about 10 people standing around waiting for the Skeletons to spawn at which point someone smacks one, locks combat, and hopes for a drop. After fighting over this extremely meager spawn for about 5 minutes or so folks start grouping up. Now I am hoping I am doing something wrong here but for the life of me I could not get a âgroup windowâ to come up where I could see the health/mana of all my group-mates. I could see my own and the group leaders but no one else. If anyone knows how to fix this please let me know since its extremely difficult to keep folks alive as a healer when you have to keep clicking on each individual to check their status. Anyway even with groups this quest was still taking to long so we formed a âRaid Partyâ which is basically several smaller groups combined into a larger one without having to disband each individual group. By the way the Raid window worked fine and I could see all my Raid members. So with one big Raid now we try and finish this stupid Skeleton quest. It took us a good hour to hour and a half to finish this ridiculous quest with large portions of that time spent standing around twiddling our thumbs. Sometimes for literally 5 minute intervals. Now 5 minutes doesnât sound like a long time but when your playing an MMORPG itâs a very long time. You want to keep the action flowing and keep your players moving from quest to quest, especially in the âstarterâ zone where folks are going to start formulating their opinions of the game. Now granted this was most likely an isolated incident with a spawn that needs tweaking but it just sent a shiver down my spine with recollections of EQ1âs camping.

So anyway we finally finish the skeleton quest and we move on to another quest where we are required to kill sharks out in the bay. So we swim out and start killing some sharks. At one point we become overwhelmed with too many sharks attacking us so we swim back to shore to escape the mobs. We get back to the beach and âhey the sharks are climbing out of the water!â ok so we run further inland and these mutant sharks are still chasing us, we run all the way back into the forested glade and still the sharks keep coming. We begin running around in circles while the guards start killing off what are apparently amphibious sharks. I know it seems comical but this really bothered me, I know the EQ2 devâs stated they were going to make kiting in EQ2 as close to impossible as they could but there are other methods of doing that besides having fish be able to chase you anywhere you go. So we do more questing we gain more XP yada yada, basically just trying to get another level or two so we can finish the two quests that were too tough earlier. Unfortunately we find to our dismay there is a level cap of 6th level on the starter Island, so we cannot progress high enough to kill those tougher mobs. Basically what is happening here is the system is forcing you to form groups to accomplish certain tasks. Now again I am on the fence with this tactic. While on one hand I donât have a problem with a game trying to âteachâ you some of the different aspects such as grouping I was not happy with how it was handled here. I have played many other games, which used similar tactics however the intent was laid out better. Normally its along the lines of a quest that requires a player to find another player, group up and return to the quest giver. Short, simple and to the point. I donât think a quest in a starter zone should require a group of 4 or more players to complete. Grouping with one other person teaches you how to group anything more is overkill. To be fair I think it may have had something to do with the âHeroic Occurrenceâ or whatever its called that requires several people in a group to accomplish but we never actually got it to work anyway. Suffice it to say we did manage to complete the final quests and worked our way off the Island. The flavor of the game changed again, for me at least, once I hit the next area but since this post is already long enough so that only about 2 people will get this far Ill save that story for later.

Locked combat. I don't like it. I don't like kill stealing either though. We'll see how it works, but I sorta figure that is one of those social aspects of the game that just need to be worked out between the players.

The con telling you who will aggro is something else I don't like. I always thought that was part of the fun. Sure it sucks to pull something you think is a solo and the whole camp comes and kills everyone, but some of those events are the also the most memorable looking back on them. Forces you to experiment and learn techniques that you might apply to later encounters and adds a little bit of excitement from the uncertainty.

The crafting I'll differ from you though. Like most things, I think if you give it time, it will not seem so complex and hopefully less boring than a simpler scheme.

I'm still waiting on my copy, so these are just my opinions based on what I've read here. Look forward to your third installment.

Thank you for your post. As far as your group window concerns go its pretty easy. Take that bar where your group leader shows up and expand it just like you would a window in your operatiing system. simply put it at the ege of the box, click and drag to your desired size.

As for the waypoint system, it does work with with most quests that lead to NPC or some specific place. Just double click your quest help window to bring up your quest log click desired quest and then click the waypoint button that is on the bottom right of the window (IIRC) Also there is a waypoint option in the EQ2 window that will do the same for non quest related people and places.

Unfortunatly alot of your problems with EQ are just like that group bar and the waypoint system. you simply need more time to figure things out. I know you kept saying in your post how you would have liked warning for this or that feature, but stop for a second and think of 2 things 1) for some people discovering these new things is a happy thing and 2) if they warned you about everything there is the tutorial would be years long, its simply not effective to do that. No offence intended bro. its definatly a complicated game.

Keep at it, its a brilliant game, and since you are on the fence, figuring out the UI might infact be what you need to put you in the like catagory. If you need any help at all feel free to ask, ill be happy to help you. if you happen to be on the unrest server you can /tell me in game and add me to your friends list. My name is AttA.